September 2007

In high school I decided I was going to study philosophy in college.

I had several motives, some more honorable than others.

One of the less honorable was to shock people.

College was regarded as job training where I grew up, so studying philosophy seemed an impressively impractical thing to do.

Sort of like slashing holes in your clothes or putting a safety pin through your ear, which were other forms of impressive impracticality then just coming into fashion.

But I had some more honest motives as well.

I thought studying philosophy would be a shortcut straight to wisdom.

All the people majoring in other things would just end up with a bunch of domain knowledge.

I would be learning what was really what.

I'd tried to read a few philosophy books.

Not recent ones; you wouldn't find those in our high school library.

But I tried to read Plato and Aristotle.

I doubt I believed I understood them, but they sounded like they were talking about something important.

I assumed I'd learn what in college.

The summer before senior year I took some college classes.

I learned a lot in the calculus class, but I didn't learn much in Philosophy 101.

And yet my plan to study philosophy remained intact.

It was my fault I hadn't learned anything.

I hadn't read the books we were assigned carefully enough.

I'd give Berkeley's Principles of Human Knowledge another shot in college.

Anything so admired and so difficult to read must have something in it, if one could only figure out what.

Twenty-six years later, I still don't understand Berkeley.

I have a nice edition of his collected works.

Will I ever read it?

Seems unlikely.

The difference between then and now is that now I understand why Berkeley is probably not worth trying to understand.

I think I see now what went wrong with philosophy, and how we might fix it.

In high school I decided to study philosophy in college. One motive was to shock people: where I grew up college was job training, so philosophy seemed impressively impractical, like slashing holes in your clothes.

But I had more honest motives too. I thought philosophy would be a shortcut straight to wisdom. Everyone else would just end up with domain knowledge; I would be learning what was really what.

I'd tried reading Plato and Aristotle. I doubt I understood them, but they sounded like they were talking about something important; I assumed I'd learn what in college. When Philosophy 101 taught me little, it was my fault, I assumed: anything so admired and so difficult to read must have something in it, if one could only figure out what.

Twenty-six years later, I still don't understand Berkeley. I have a nice edition of his collected works. Will I ever read it? Seems unlikely.

The difference now is that I understand why Berkeley is probably not worth trying to understand. I think I see what went wrong with philosophy, and how we might fix it.

In high school I planned to major in philosophy, partly to shock people, partly because I thought it was a shortcut to wisdom. Twenty-six years on I still don't understand Berkeley—but now I understand why.

Words

I did end up being a philosophy major for most of college.

It didn't work out as I'd hoped.

I didn't learn any magical truths compared to which everything else was mere domain knowledge.

But I do at least know now why I didn't.

Philosophy doesn't really have a subject matter in the way math or history or most other university subjects do.

There is no core of knowledge one must master.

The closest you come to that is a knowledge of what various individual philosophers have said about different topics over the years.

Few were sufficiently correct that people have forgotten who discovered what they discovered.

Formal logic has some subject matter.

I took several classes in logic.

I don't know if I learned anything from them. [1] It does seem to me very important to be able to flip ideas around in one's head: to see when two ideas don't fully cover the space of possibilities, or when one idea is the same as another but with a couple things changed.

But did studying logic teach me the importance of thinking this way, or make me any better at it?

I don't know.

There are things I know I learned from studying philosophy.

The most dramatic I learned immediately, in the first semester of freshman year, in a class taught by Sydney Shoemaker.

I learned that I don't exist. I am (and you are) a collection of cells that lurches around driven by various forces, and calls itself I.

But there's no central, indivisible thing that your identity goes with.

You could conceivably lose half your brain and live.

Which means your brain could conceivably be split into two halves and each transplanted into different bodies.

Imagine waking up after such an operation.

You have to imagine being two people.

The real lesson here is that the concepts we use in everyday life are fuzzy, and break down if pushed too hard.

Even a concept as dear to us as I.

It took me a while to grasp this, but when I did it was fairly sudden, like someone in the nineteenth century grasping evolution and realizing the story of creation they'd been told as a child was all wrong. [2] Outside of math there's a limit to how far you can push words; in fact, it would not be a bad definition of math to call it the study of terms that have precise meanings.

Everyday words are inherently imprecise.

They work well enough in everyday life that you don't notice.

Words seem to work, just as Newtonian physics seems to.

But you can always make them break if you push them far enough.

I would say that this has been, unfortunately for philosophy, the central fact of philosophy.

Most philosophical debates are not merely afflicted by but driven by confusions over words.

Do we have free will?

Depends what you mean by "free."

Do abstract ideas exist?

Depends what you mean by "exist."

Wittgenstein is popularly credited with the idea that most philosophical controversies are due to confusions over language.

I'm not sure how much credit to give him.

I suspect a lot of people realized this, but reacted simply by not studying philosophy, rather than becoming philosophy professors.

How did things get this way?

Can something people have spent thousands of years studying really be a waste of time?

Those are interesting questions.

In fact, some of the most interesting questions you can ask about philosophy.

The most valuable way to approach the current philosophical tradition may be neither to get lost in pointless speculations like Berkeley, nor to shut them down like Wittgenstein, but to study it as an example of reason gone wrong.

I was a philosophy major for most of college, and it didn't work out as I'd hoped: no magical truths next to which everything else was mere domain knowledge. Philosophy doesn't really have a subject matter the way math or history do; there's no core to master, only a knowledge of what philosophers said.

Formal logic has some subject matter. I took several classes and don't know if I learned anything. It does seem important to flip ideas around in one's head—to see when two ideas don't cover the space, or when one is another with a couple things changed. But did logic teach me that? I don't know.

The most dramatic thing I learned, in freshman year under Sydney Shoemaker, was that I don't exist. I am a collection of cells that lurches around and calls itself I, with no central, indivisible thing your identity goes with. You could lose half your brain and live—so your brain could be split and each half transplanted. Imagine waking up after such an operation: you have to imagine being two people.

The real lesson is that everyday concepts are fuzzy and break down if pushed too hard—even a concept as dear as I. Outside math there's a limit to how far you can push words; it would not be a bad definition of math to call it the study of terms with precise meanings. Words seem to work, just as Newtonian physics seems to—but you can always make them break if you push far enough.

This has been, unfortunately for philosophy, the central fact of philosophy. Most philosophical debates are not merely afflicted by but driven by confusions over words. Do we have free will? Depends what you mean by "free." Do abstract ideas exist? Depends what you mean by "exist."

Wittgenstein is credited with the idea that philosophical controversies are confusions over language. I'm not sure how much credit to give him; many people surely realized this, but reacted by not studying philosophy rather than becoming philosophy professors.

How did things get this way? Can something studied for thousands of years really be a waste of time? The most valuable approach may be neither to get lost in pointless speculations like Berkeley, nor to shut them down like Wittgenstein, but to study it as an example of reason gone wrong.

Philosophy has no real subject matter. Its central fact, unfortunately, is that everyday words are imprecise and break if pushed too far—so most philosophical debates are driven by confusions over words.

History

Western philosophy really begins with Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.

What we know of their predecessors comes from fragments and references in later works; their doctrines could be described as speculative cosmology that occasionally strays into analysis.

Presumably they were driven by whatever makes people in every other society invent cosmologies. [3]

With Socrates, Plato, and particularly Aristotle, this tradition turned a corner.

There started to be a lot more analysis.

I suspect Plato and Aristotle were encouraged in this by progress in math.

Mathematicians had by then shown that you could figure things out in a much more conclusive way than by making up fine sounding stories about them. [4]

People talk so much about abstractions now that we don't realize what a leap it must have been when they first started to.

It was presumably many thousands of years between when people first started describing things as hot or cold and when someone asked "what is heat?"

No doubt it was a very gradual process.

We don't know if Plato or Aristotle were the first to ask any of the questions they did.

But their works are the oldest we have that do this on a large scale, and there is a freshness (not to say naivete) about them that suggests some of the questions they asked were new to them, at least.

Aristotle in particular reminds me of the phenomenon that happens when people discover something new, and are so excited by it that they race through a huge percentage of the newly discovered territory in one lifetime.

If so, that's evidence of how new this kind of thinking was. [5]

This is all to explain how Plato and Aristotle can be very impressive and yet naive and mistaken.

It was impressive even to ask the questions they did.

That doesn't mean they always came up with good answers.

It's not considered insulting to say that ancient Greek mathematicians were naive in some respects, or at least lacked some concepts that would have made their lives easier.

So I hope people will not be too offended if I propose that ancient philosophers were similarly naive.

In particular, they don't seem to have fully grasped what I earlier called the central fact of philosophy: that words break if you push them too far.

"Much to the surprise of the builders of the first digital computers," Rod Brooks wrote, "programs written for them usually did not work." [6] Something similar happened when people first started trying to talk about abstractions.

Much to their surprise, they didn't arrive at answers they agreed upon.

In fact, they rarely seemed to arrive at answers at all.

They were in effect arguing about artifacts induced by sampling at too low a resolution.

The proof of how useless some of their answers turned out to be is how little effect they have.

No one after reading Aristotle's Metaphysics does anything differently as a result. [7]

Surely I'm not claiming that ideas have to have practical applications to be interesting?

No, they may not have to.

Hardy's boast that number theory had no use whatsoever wouldn't disqualify it.

But he turned out to be mistaken.

In fact, it's suspiciously hard to find a field of math that truly has no practical use.

And Aristotle's explanation of the ultimate goal of philosophy in Book A of the Metaphysics implies that philosophy should be useful too.

Western philosophy really begins with Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. With Aristotle especially the tradition turned a corner: there started to be a lot more analysis. I suspect they were encouraged by progress in math, which had shown you could figure things out more conclusively than by making up fine-sounding stories.

We talk so much about abstractions now that we don't realize what a leap it was—presumably thousands of years between describing things as hot and asking "what is heat?" Aristotle reminds me of someone so excited by a discovery that he races through a huge percentage of the new territory in one lifetime.

This explains how Plato and Aristotle can be impressive yet naive. It was impressive even to ask the questions; that doesn't mean they got good answers. In particular, they didn't grasp the central fact: that words break if you push them too far.

"Much to the surprise of the builders of the first digital computers," Rod Brooks wrote, "programs written for them usually did not work." Something similar happened when people first tried to talk about abstractions: they rarely arrived at answers they agreed upon, or at answers at all. They were arguing about artifacts induced by sampling at too low a resolution.

The proof of how useless some of their answers were is how little effect they have. No one after reading Aristotle's Metaphysics does anything differently as a result.

Surely I'm not claiming ideas must have practical applications to be interesting? No—Hardy boasted number theory had no use whatsoever, but he turned out to be mistaken. It's suspiciously hard to find a field of math with truly no use. And Aristotle's own account of the goal of philosophy implies it should be useful too.

Western philosophy turned a corner with Plato and Aristotle, who first analyzed abstractions on a large scale—impressive but naive. They never grasped that words break when pushed, so they argued endlessly without arriving at answers.

Theoretical Knowledge

Aristotle's goal was to find the most general of general principles.

The examples he gives are convincing: an ordinary worker builds things a certain way out of habit; a master craftsman can do more because he grasps the underlying principles.

The trend is clear: the more general the knowledge, the more admirable it is.

But then he makes a mistake—possibly the most important mistake in the history of philosophy.

He has noticed that theoretical knowledge is often acquired for its own sake, out of curiosity, rather than for any practical need.

So he proposes there are two kinds of theoretical knowledge: some that's useful in practical matters and some that isn't.

Since people interested in the latter are interested in it for its own sake, it must be more noble.

So he sets as his goal in the Metaphysics the exploration of knowledge that has no practical use.

Which means no alarms go off when he takes on grand but vaguely understood questions and ends up getting lost in a sea of words.

His mistake was to confuse motive and result.

Certainly, people who want a deep understanding of something are often driven by curiosity rather than any practical need.

But that doesn't mean what they end up learning is useless.

It's very valuable in practice to have a deep understanding of what you're doing; even if you're never called on to solve advanced problems, you can see shortcuts in the solution of simple ones, and your knowledge won't break down in edge cases, as it would if you were relying on formulas you didn't understand.

Knowledge is power.

That's what makes theoretical knowledge prestigious.

It's also what causes smart people to be curious about certain things and not others; our DNA is not so disinterested as we might think.

So while ideas don't have to have immediate practical applications to be interesting, the kinds of things we find interesting will surprisingly often turn out to have practical applications.

The reason Aristotle didn't get anywhere in the Metaphysics was partly that he set off with contradictory aims: to explore the most abstract ideas, guided by the assumption that they were useless.

He was like an explorer looking for a territory to the north of him, starting with the assumption that it was located to the south.

And since his work became the map used by generations of future explorers, he sent them off in the wrong direction as well. [8] Perhaps worst of all, he protected them from both the criticism of outsiders and the promptings of their own inner compass by establishing the principle that the most noble sort of theoretical knowledge had to be useless.

The Metaphysics is mostly a failed experiment.

A few ideas from it turned out to be worth keeping; the bulk of it has had no effect at all.

The Metaphysics is among the least read of all famous books.

It's not hard to understand the way Newton's Principia is, but the way a garbled message is.

Arguably it's an interesting failed experiment.

But unfortunately that was not the conclusion Aristotle's successors derived from works like the Metaphysics. [9] Soon after, the western world fell on intellectual hard times.

Instead of version 1s to be superseded, the works of Plato and Aristotle became revered texts to be mastered and discussed.

And so things remained for a shockingly long time.

It was not till around 1600 (in Europe, where the center of gravity had shifted by then) that one found people confident enough to treat Aristotle's work as a catalog of mistakes.

And even then they rarely said so outright.

If it seems surprising that the gap was so long, consider how little progress there was in math between Hellenistic times and the Renaissance.

In the intervening years an unfortunate idea took hold: that it was not only acceptable to produce works like the Metaphysics, but that it was a particularly prestigious line of work, done by a class of people called philosophers.

No one thought to go back and debug Aristotle's motivating argument.

And so instead of correcting the problem Aristotle discovered by falling into it—that you can easily get lost if you talk too loosely about very abstract ideas—they continued to fall into it.

Aristotle's goal was the most general principles: a master craftsman does more than an ordinary worker because he grasps them. But then he makes possibly the most important mistake in the history of philosophy. Noticing that theoretical knowledge is often acquired out of curiosity, he concludes the useless kind, sought for its own sake, must be more noble. So he sets out in the Metaphysics to explore knowledge with no practical use—and no alarms go off when he gets lost in a sea of words.

His mistake was to confuse motive and result. People who want deep understanding are often driven by curiosity, but that doesn't make what they learn useless. It's very valuable to understand what you're doing: you see shortcuts and your knowledge won't break down in edge cases. Knowledge is power—that's what makes theoretical knowledge prestigious. So the things we find interesting surprisingly often turn out to be useful.

Aristotle set off with contradictory aims: to explore the most abstract ideas while assuming they were useless. He was like an explorer looking for a territory to the north, starting with the assumption that it was located to the south. And since his work became the map for future explorers, he sent them off in the wrong direction too.

The Metaphysics is mostly a failed experiment. A few ideas were worth keeping; the bulk has had no effect. It's among the least read of all famous books—not hard to understand the way Newton's Principia is, but the way a garbled message is.

That wasn't the conclusion Aristotle's successors drew. Soon after, the western world fell on intellectual hard times. Instead of version 1s to be superseded, Plato and Aristotle became revered texts to master, and so it remained for a shockingly long time—not till around 1600 did people treat Aristotle as a catalog of mistakes. An unfortunate idea took hold: that producing works like the Metaphysics was a prestigious line of work. No one debugged Aristotle's argument, so they kept falling into the problem he fell into.

Aristotle's most important mistake: confusing motive and result. Because curiosity-driven knowledge is sought for its own sake, he declared the noblest knowledge must be useless—and sent generations off looking for territory in the wrong direction.

The Singularity

Curiously, however, the works they produced continued to attract new readers.

Traditional philosophy occupies a kind of singularity in this respect.

If you write in an unclear way about big ideas, you produce something that seems tantalizingly attractive to inexperienced but intellectually ambitious students.

Till one knows better, it's hard to distinguish something that's hard to understand because the writer was unclear in his own mind from something like a mathematical proof that's hard to understand because the ideas it represents are hard to understand.

To someone who hasn't learned the difference, traditional philosophy seems extremely attractive: as hard (and therefore impressive) as math, yet broader in scope.

That was what lured me in as a high school student.

This singularity is even more singular in having its own defense built in.

When things are hard to understand, people who suspect they're nonsense generally keep quiet.

There's no way to prove a text is meaningless.

The closest you can get is to show that the official judges of some class of texts can't distinguish them from placebos. [10]

And so instead of denouncing philosophy, most people who suspected it was a waste of time just studied other things.

That alone is fairly damning evidence, considering philosophy's claims. It's supposed to be about the ultimate truths.

Surely all smart people would be interested in it, if it delivered on that promise.

Because philosophy's flaws turned away the sort of people who might have corrected them, they tended to be self-perpetuating.

Bertrand Russell wrote in a letter in 1912:

Hitherto the people attracted to philosophy have been mostly those who loved the big generalizations, which were all wrong, so that few people with exact minds have taken up the subject. [11]

His response was to launch Wittgenstein at it, with dramatic results.

I think Wittgenstein deserves to be famous not for the discovery that most previous philosophy was a waste of time, which judging from the circumstantial evidence must have been made by every smart person who studied a little philosophy and declined to pursue it further, but for how he acted in response. [12] Instead of quietly switching to another field, he made a fuss, from inside.

He was Gorbachev.

The field of philosophy is still shaken from the fright Wittgenstein gave it. [13] Later in life he spent a lot of time talking about how words worked.

Since that seems to be allowed, that's what a lot of philosophers do now.

Meanwhile, sensing a vacuum in the metaphysical speculation department, the people who used to do literary criticism have been edging Kantward, under new names like "literary theory," "critical theory," and when they're feeling ambitious, plain "theory."

The writing is the familiar word salad:

Gender is not like some of the other grammatical modes which express precisely a mode of conception without any reality that corresponds to the conceptual mode, and consequently do not express precisely something in reality by which the intellect could be moved to conceive a thing the way it does, even where that motive is not something in the thing as such. [14]

The singularity I've described is not going away.

There's a market for writing that sounds impressive and can't be disproven.

There will always be both supply and demand.

So if one group abandons this territory, there will always be others ready to occupy it.

Curiously, these works kept attracting readers. Traditional philosophy is a kind of singularity: write unclearly about big ideas and you produce something tantalizing to ambitious students. Till one knows better, it's hard to distinguish writing that's hard because the writer was unclear from a proof that's hard because the ideas are. It seems as hard as math yet broader in scope. That was what lured me in.

This singularity has its own defense built in. When things are hard to understand, people who suspect they're nonsense generally keep quiet. There's no way to prove a text is meaningless; the closest you get is to show that the official judges of some class of texts can't tell them from placebos.

So instead of denouncing philosophy, most who suspected it was a waste of time just studied other things. That alone is fairly damning, considering it's supposed to be about ultimate truths. Surely all smart people would be interested, if it delivered on that promise.

Because philosophy's flaws turned away the people who might have corrected them, they were self-perpetuating. Russell wrote in 1912 that those attracted to philosophy had mostly loved big generalizations, which were all wrong, so few exact minds took it up. His response was to launch Wittgenstein at it—who deserves fame not for discovering that previous philosophy was a waste of time, but for how he acted: instead of quietly leaving, he made a fuss from inside. He was Gorbachev.

The field is still shaken from the fright Wittgenstein gave it. Later he talked about how words worked; since that seems allowed, that's what many philosophers do now. Meanwhile the old literary critics, sensing a vacuum, have been edging Kantward under names like "critical theory" and plain "theory"—the familiar word salad.

The singularity is not going away. There's a market for writing that sounds impressive and can't be disproven; there will always be both supply and demand. If one group abandons this territory, others will occupy it.

Unclear writing about big ideas is a singularity: tantalizing to ambitious students, impossible to disprove, with its own defense built in. Its flaws drove away the people who might have fixed them—until Russell launched Wittgenstein at it.

A Proposal

We may be able to do better.

Here's an intriguing possibility.

Perhaps we should do what Aristotle meant to do, instead of what he did.

The goal he announces in the Metaphysics seems one worth pursuing: to discover the most general truths.

That sounds good.

But instead of trying to discover them because they're useless, let's try to discover them because they're useful.

I propose we try again, but that we use that heretofore despised criterion, applicability, as a guide to keep us from wondering off into a swamp of abstractions.

Instead of trying to answer the question:

What are the most general truths?

let's try to answer the question

Of all the useful things we can say, which are the most general?

The test of utility I propose is whether we cause people who read what we've written to do anything differently afterward.

Knowing we have to give definite (if implicit) advice will keep us from straying beyond the resolution of the words we're using.

The goal is the same as Aristotle's; we just approach it from a different direction.

As an example of a useful, general idea, consider that of the controlled experiment.

There's an idea that has turned out to be widely applicable.

Some might say it's part of science, but it's not part of any specific science; it's literally meta-physics (in our sense of "meta").

The idea of evolution is another.

It turns out to have quite broad applications—for example, in genetic algorithms and even product design.

Frankfurt's distinction between lying and bullshitting seems a promising recent example. [15]

These seem to me what philosophy should look like: quite general observations that would cause someone who understood them to do something differently.

Such observations will necessarily be about things that are imprecisely defined.

Once you start using words with precise meanings, you're doing math.

So starting from utility won't entirely solve the problem I described above—it won't flush out the metaphysical singularity.

But it should help.

It gives people with good intentions a new roadmap into abstraction.

And they may thereby produce things that make the writing of the people with bad intentions look bad by comparison.

One drawback of this approach is that it won't produce the sort of writing that gets you tenure.

And not just because it's not currently the fashion.

In order to get tenure in any field you must not arrive at conclusions that members of tenure committees can disagree with.

In practice there are two kinds of solutions to this problem.

In math and the sciences, you can prove what you're saying, or at any rate adjust your conclusions so you're not claiming anything false ("6 of 8 subjects had lower blood pressure after the treatment").

In the humanities you can either avoid drawing any definite conclusions (e.g. conclude that an issue is a complex one), or draw conclusions so narrow that no one cares enough to disagree with you.

The kind of philosophy I'm advocating won't be able to take either of these routes.

At best you'll be able to achieve the essayist's standard of proof, not the mathematician's or the experimentalist's.

And yet you won't be able to meet the usefulness test without implying definite and fairly broadly applicable conclusions.

Worse still, the usefulness test will tend to produce results that annoy people: there's no use in telling people things they already believe, and people are often upset to be told things they don't.

Here's the exciting thing, though.

Anyone can do this.

Getting to general plus useful by starting with useful and cranking up the generality may be unsuitable for junior professors trying to get tenure, but it's better for everyone else, including professors who already have it.

This side of the mountain is a nice gradual slope.

You can start by writing things that are useful but very specific, and then gradually make them more general.

Joe's has good burritos.

What makes a good burrito?

What makes good food?

What makes anything good?

You can take as long as you want.

You don't have to get all the way to the top of the mountain.

You don't have to tell anyone you're doing philosophy.

If it seems like a daunting task to do philosophy, here's an encouraging thought.

The field is a lot younger than it seems. Though the first philosophers in the western tradition lived about 2500 years ago, it would be misleading to say the field is 2500 years old, because for most of that time the leading practitioners weren't doing much more than writing commentaries on Plato or Aristotle while watching over their shoulders for the next invading army.

In the times when they weren't, philosophy was hopelessly intermingled with religion.

It didn't shake itself free till a couple hundred years ago, and even then was afflicted by the structural problems I've described above.

If I say this, some will say it's a ridiculously overbroad and uncharitable generalization, and others will say it's old news, but here goes: judging from their works, most philosophers up to the present have been wasting their time.

So in a sense the field is still at the first step. [16]

That sounds a preposterous claim to make.

It won't seem so preposterous in 10,000 years.

Civilization always seems old, because it's always the oldest it's ever been.

The only way to say whether something is really old or not is by looking at structural evidence, and structurally philosophy is young; it's still reeling from the unexpected breakdown of words.

Philosophy is as young now as math was in 1500.

There is a lot more to discover.

We may be able to do better. Perhaps we should do what Aristotle meant to do, instead of what he did. His announced goal—to discover the most general truths—is worth pursuing. But instead of trying to discover them because they're useless, let's try to discover them because they're useful.

I propose we use that despised criterion, applicability, to keep us from wandering into a swamp of abstractions. Instead of asking "What are the most general truths?" let's ask "Of all the useful things we can say, which are the most general?" The test is whether we cause readers to do anything differently afterward.

As examples, consider the controlled experiment—widely applicable, part of no specific science, literally meta-physics. Evolution is another. Frankfurt's distinction between lying and bullshitting is a promising recent one. These are what philosophy should look like: general observations that would cause someone who understood them to do something differently.

Such observations will necessarily be about imprecisely defined things; once you use words with precise meanings, you're doing math. So starting from utility won't entirely flush out the singularity, but it should help. It gives people with good intentions a new roadmap into abstraction.

One drawback: this won't produce the sort of writing that gets you tenure. To get tenure you must not reach conclusions a committee can disagree with—in the sciences you prove or hedge them, in the humanities you draw conclusions too narrow to dispute. The philosophy I'm advocating can take neither route: at best you'll achieve the essayist's standard of proof. Worse, useful results annoy people: there's no use telling people what they already believe, and they're often upset to be told what they don't.

Here's the exciting thing: anyone can do this. Starting with useful and cranking up the generality is unsuitable for junior professors but better for everyone else. This side of the mountain is a nice gradual slope. Joe's has good burritos. What makes a good burrito? What makes good food? What makes anything good? You don't have to reach the top, and you don't have to tell anyone you're doing philosophy.

If philosophy seems daunting, the field is younger than it seems. The first western philosophers lived 2500 years ago, but for most of that time the leading practitioners did little more than write commentaries on Plato or Aristotle, or intermingle philosophy with religion. Judging from their works, most philosophers have been wasting their time—so in a sense the field is still at the first step.

That sounds a preposterous claim, but it won't in 10,000 years. Civilization always seems old, because it's always the oldest it's ever been. The only way to tell whether something is really old is by structural evidence, and structurally philosophy is young; it's still reeling from the unexpected breakdown of words. Philosophy is as young now as math was in 1500. There is a lot more to discover.

Do what Aristotle meant to do, not what he did: pursue the most general truths because they're useful, not because they're useless. The test is whether readers do anything differently. It won't get you tenure, but anyone can do it—and the field is young.

Notes

[1] In practice formal logic is not much use, because despite some progress in the last 150 years we're still only able to formalize a small percentage of statements. We may never do that much better, for the same reason 1980s-style "knowledge representation" could never have worked; many statements may have no representation more concise than a huge, analog brain state.

[2] It was harder for Darwin's contemporaries to grasp this than we can easily imagine. The story of creation in the Bible is not just a Judeo-Christian concept; it's roughly what everyone must have believed since before people were people. The hard part of grasping evolution was to realize that species weren't, as they seem to be, unchanging, but had instead evolved from different, simpler organisms over unimaginably long periods of time.

Now we don't have to make that leap.

No one in an industrialized country encounters the idea of evolution for the first time as an adult.

Everyone's taught about it as a child, either as truth or heresy.

[3] Greek philosophers before Plato wrote in verse. This must have affected what they said. If you try to write about the nature of the world in verse, it inevitably turns into incantation. Prose lets you be more precise, and more tentative.

[4] Philosophy is like math's ne'er-do-well brother. It was born when Plato and Aristotle looked at the works of their predecessors and said in effect "why can't you be more like your brother?" Russell was still saying the same thing 2300 years later.

Math is the precise half of the most abstract ideas, and philosophy the imprecise half.

It's probably inevitable that philosophy will suffer by comparison, because there's no lower bound to its precision.

Bad math is merely boring, whereas bad philosophy is nonsense.

And yet there are some good ideas in the imprecise half.

[5] Aristotle's best work was in logic and zoology, both of which he can be said to have invented. But the most dramatic departure from his predecessors was a new, much more analytical style of thinking. He was arguably the first scientist.

[6] Brooks, Rodney, Programming in Common Lisp, Wiley, 1985, p. 94.

[7] Some would say we depend on Aristotle more than we realize, because his ideas were one of the ingredients in our common culture. Certainly a lot of the words we use have a connection with Aristotle, but it seems a bit much to suggest that we wouldn't have the concept of the essence of something or the distinction between matter and form if Aristotle hadn't written about them.

One way to see how much we really depend on Aristotle would be to diff European culture with Chinese: what ideas did European culture have in 1800 that Chinese culture didn't, in virtue of Aristotle's contribution?

[8] The meaning of the word "philosophy" has changed over time. In ancient times it covered a broad range of topics, comparable in scope to our "scholarship" (though without the methodological implications). Even as late as Newton's time it included what we now call "science." But core of the subject today is still what seemed to Aristotle the core: the attempt to discover the most general truths.

Aristotle didn't call this "metaphysics."

That name got assigned to it because the books we now call the Metaphysics came after (meta = after) the Physics in the standard edition of Aristotle's works compiled by Andronicus of Rhodes three centuries later.

What we call "metaphysics" Aristotle called "first philosophy."

[9] Some of Aristotle's immediate successors may have realized this, but it's hard to say because most of their works are lost.

[10] Sokal, Alan, "Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity," Social Text 46/47, pp. 217-252.

Abstract-sounding nonsense seems to be most attractive when it's aligned with some axe the audience already has to grind.

If this is so we should find it's most popular with groups that are (or feel) weak.

The powerful don't need its reassurance.

[11] Letter to Ottoline Morrell, December 1912. Quoted in:

Monk, Ray, Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius, Penguin, 1991, p.

[12] A preliminary result, that all metaphysics between Aristotle and 1783 had been a waste of time, is due to I. Kant.

[13] Wittgenstein asserted a sort of mastery to which the inhabitants of early 20th century Cambridge seem to have been peculiarly vulnerable—perhaps partly because so many had been raised religious and then stopped believing, so had a vacant space in their heads for someone to tell them what to do (others chose Marx or Cardinal Newman), and partly because a quiet, earnest place like Cambridge in that era had no natural immunity to messianic figures, just as European politics then had no natural immunity to dictators.

[14] This is actually from the Ordinatio of Duns Scotus (ca. 1300), with "number" replaced by "gender." Plus ca change.

Wolter, Allan (trans), Duns Scotus: Philosophical Writings, Nelson, 1963, p.

[15] Frankfurt, Harry, On Bullshit, Princeton University Press, 2005.

[16] Some introductions to philosophy now take the line that philosophy is worth studying as a process rather than for any particular truths you'll learn. The philosophers whose works they cover would be rolling in their graves at that. They hoped they were doing more than serving as examples of how to argue: they hoped they were getting results. Most were wrong, but it doesn't seem an impossible hope.

This argument seems to me like someone in 1500 looking at the lack of results achieved by alchemy and saying its value was as a process.

No, they were going about it wrong.

It turns out it is possible to transmute lead into gold (though not economically at current energy prices), but the route to that knowledge was to backtrack and try another approach.

Thanks to Trevor Blackwell, Paul Buchheit, Jessica Livingston, Robert Morris, Mark Nitzberg, and Peter Norvig for reading drafts of this.

Formal logic is not much use in practice: we can still formalize only a small percentage of statements, and may never do much better—many statements may have no representation more concise than a huge, analog brain state.

It was harder for Darwin's contemporaries to grasp evolution than we imagine. The hard part was realizing species weren't unchanging but had evolved over unimaginable spans. Now no one in an industrialized country meets the idea as an adult.

Philosophy is like math's ne'er-do-well brother: math the precise half of the most abstract ideas, philosophy the imprecise half. Bad math is merely boring, whereas bad philosophy is nonsense. And yet there are some good ideas in the imprecise half.

Aristotle's best work was in logic and zoology, both of which he can be said to have invented; but his most dramatic departure was a far more analytical style of thinking. He was arguably the first scientist.

A preliminary result, that all metaphysics between Aristotle and 1783 had been a waste of time, is due to Kant.

Wittgenstein asserted a mastery to which early-20th-century Cambridge was peculiarly vulnerable—perhaps because so many had been raised religious and then stopped believing, leaving a vacant space for someone to tell them what to do, just as European politics then had no immunity to dictators.

Some introductions now say philosophy is worth studying as a process rather than for particular truths; its philosophers would be rolling in their graves, since they hoped to get results. It's like someone in 1500 saying alchemy's value was as a process—no, they were going about it wrong. It does turn out you can transmute lead into gold, but the route was to backtrack and try another approach.

Footnotes: formal logic still can't formalize much; evolution was harder for Darwin's contemporaries to grasp; Aristotle was arguably the first scientist; Kant's preliminary result; Wittgenstein's grip on post-religious Cambridge.